- talks - lists.cs.princeton.edu

Logan Stafman will be presenting his Pre FPO on Friday, February 22, 2019 at 3pm in CS 302.
by Nicki Mahler 15 Feb '19

15 Feb '19

Logan Stafman will be presenting his Pre FPO on Friday, February 22, 2019 at 3pm in CS 302. The members of his committee are as follows: Michael Freedman (adviser), Wyatt Lloyd, Kyle Jamieson, Amit Levy, and Jennifer Rexford. All are welcome to attend. Please see below for talk title and abstract. Utility Scheduling in Multi-Tenant Clusters The rapid increase in data size along with the complex patterns of data usage amongst data scientists presents new challenges for large-scale data analytics systems. Modern distributed computing frameworks must support complex applications that range from answering database queries to training machine learning models. As data centers have grown, managing their resources has become an increasingly important task. New applications have become popular that make traditional scheduling systems inadequate. In this thesis, we present distributed scheduling systems aimed at increasing cluster resource utilization by taking advantage of specific characteristics of data processing applications. We present the following systems: (i) SLAQ: a cluster scheduling system for machine learning (ML) training jobs that aims to maximize the qualities of all models trained. In exploratory model training, models can be improved more quickly by redirecting resources to jobs with the highest potential for improvement. SLAQ reduces latency and maximizes the quality of models being trained by a distributed ML cluster. (ii) ReLAQS: a cluster scheduling system for incremental approximate query processing (AQP) systems that aims to minimize the error of all approximate results. In AQP, queries compute approximate results by sampling data. In AQP, error can be reduced more quickly by allocating resources to queries with higher error. ReLAQS reduces the latency required to reach a query result with a given level of error in a shared AQP environment. These works demonstrate a novel set of methods that can be used in fine-grained scheduling to build responsive, efficient distributed systems. We have evaluated these systems on standard benchmark workloads and datasets, as well as popular ML algorithms, and show both reduced latency and increased accuracy of intermediary results.

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Colloquium Speaker-Elissa Redmiles, Thursday Feb 21
by Emily C. Lawrence 15 Feb '19

15 Feb '19

Colloquium Speaker Elissa Redmiles from University of Maryland Thursday, February 21 - 12:30pm Computer Science - Room 105 Host: Arvind Narayanan [ http://www.cs.princeton.edu/events/25817 | http://www.cs.princeton.edu/events/25817 ] Security for All: Modeling Structural Inequities to Design More Secure Systems Users often fall for phishing emails, reuse simple passwords, and fail to effectively utilize "provably" secure systems. These behaviors expose users to significant harm and frustrate industry practitioners and security researchers alike. As consequences of security breaches become ever more grave, it is important to study why humans behave seemingly irrationally. In this talk, I will illustrate how modeling the effects of structural inequities -- variance in skill, socioeconomic status, as well as culture and gender identity -- can both explain apparent irrationality in users’ security behavior and offer tangible improvements in industry systems. Modeling and mitigating security inequities requires a combination of techniques from economic, data scientific, and social science methodologies to develop new tools for systematically understanding and mitigating insecure behavior. Through novel experimental methodology, I empirically show strong evidence of bounded rationality in security behavior: Users make mathematically modelable tradeoffs between the protection offered by security behaviors and the costs of practicing those behaviors, which even in a highly usable system may outweigh the benefits, especially for less resourced users. These findings emphasize the need for industry systems that balance structural inequities and accommodate behavioral variance between users rather than one-size-fits-all security solutions. More broadly, my techniques for modeling and accounting for inequities have offered key insights in growing technical areas beyond security, including algorithmic fairness. Bio: Elissa Redmiles is a Ph.D. Candidate in Computer Science at the University of Maryland and has been a visiting researcher with the Max Planck Institute for Software Systems and the University of Zurich. Elissa’s research interests are broadly in the areas of security and privacy. She uses computational, economic, and social science methods to conduct research on behavioral security. Elissa seeks to understand users’ security and privacy decision-making processes and specifically investigate inequalities that arise in these processes and to mitigate those inequalities through the design of systems that facilitate safety equitably across users. Elissa is the recipient of a NSF Graduate Research Fellowship, a National Science Defense and Engineering Graduate Fellowship, and a Facebook Fellowship. Her work has appeared in popular press publications such as Scientific American, Business Insider, Newsweek, and CNET and has been recognized with the John Karat Usable Privacy and Security Student Research Award, a Distinguished Paper Award at USENIX Security 2018, and a University of Maryland Outstanding Graduate Student Award.

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Colloquium Speaker-Zvi Galil, TODAY at 12:30pm
by Emily C. Lawrence 14 Feb '19

14 Feb '19

Distinguished Colloquium Speaker Zvi Galil from Georgia Tech, College of Computing Thursday, February 14 - 12:30pm Computer Science - Room 105 Host: Nick Feamster In May 2013, Georgia Tech together with its partners, Udacity and AT&T, announced a new online master’s degree in computer science delivered through the platform popularized by massively open online courses (MOOCs). This new online MS CS— or OMSCS for short — costs less than $7,000 total, compared with a price tag of $40,000 for an MS CS at comparable public universities and upwards of $70,000 at private universities. The first-of-its-kind program was launched in January 2014 and has sparked a worldwide conversation about higher education in the 21st century. President Barack Obama praised OMS CS by name twice, and more than 1,200 news stories mentioned the program. It has been described as a potential "game changer" and "ground zero of the revolution in higher education”. Harvard University researchers concluded that OMSCS is “the first rigorous evidence showing an online degree program can increase educational attainment” and predicted that OMSCS will single handedly raise the number of annual MS CS graduates in the United States by at least 7 percent. OMSCS started in 2014 with an enrollment of 380; in this semester (spring 2019) enrollment is close to 9,000; OMSCS is apparently the biggest MS in CS program in the world. So far more than 2,000 students have graduated from OMSCS; more than 1,000 will graduate each year from now on. The program has also paved the way for at least 22 similar, MOOC-based online MS programs. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the National Science Foundation, there is a shortage of 500,000 computer professionals in the US, a shortage that will reach one million by 2020. In other words, OMSCS is satisfying a great national need. The talk will describe the OMSCS program, how it came about, its first five years, and what Georgia Tech has learned from the OMSCS experience. We will also discuss its potential effect on higher education. Bio: Dr. Zvi Galil, Dean of the College of Computing, Georgia Institute of Technology, was born in Tel Aviv, Israel. He earned BS and MS degrees in Applied Mathematics from Tel Aviv University, both summa cum laude. He then obtained a PhD in Computer Science from Cornell University. After a post-doctorate in IBM's Thomas J. Watson research center, he returned to Israel and joined the faculty of Tel-Aviv University. He served as the chair of the Computer Science department in 1979-1982. In 1982 he joined the faculty of Columbia University. He served as the chair of the Computer Science Department in 1989-1994 and as dean of The Fu Foundation School of Engineering & Applied Science in 1995-2007. Galil was appointed Julian Clarence Levi Professor of Mathematical Methods and Computer Science in 1987, and Morris and Alma A. Schapiro Dean of Engineering in 1995. In 2007 Galil returned to Tel Aviv University and served as president. In 2009 he resigned as president and returned to the faculty as a professor of Computer Science. In July 2010 he became The John P. Imlay, Jr. Dean of Computing at Georgia Tech. Dr. Galil's research areas have been the design and analysis of algorithms, complexity, cryptography and experimental design. In 1983-1987 he served as chairman of ACM SIGACT, the Special Interest Group of Algorithms and Computation Theory. He has written over 200 scientific papers, edited 5 books, and has given about 250 lectures in 25 countries (over 60 in 15 countries on OMSCS). Galil has served as editor in chief of two journals and as the chief computer science adviser in the United States to the Oxford University Press. He is a fellow of the ACM and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a member of the National Academy of Engineering. In 2008 Columbia University established the Zvi Galil Award for Improvement in Engineering Student Life. In 2009 the Columbia Society of Graduates awarded him the Great Teacher Award. In 2012 the University of Waterloo awarded him an honorary doctorate in mathematics. Zvi Galil is married to Dr. Bella S. Galil, a marine biologist. They have one son, Yair , a corporate lawyer in New York City. Lunch for talk attendees will be available at 12:00pm. To request accommodations for a disability, please contact Emily Lawrence, emilyl(a)cs.princeton.edu, 609-258-4624 at least one week prior to the event.

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The "D" word: solving for "diversity" on high-tech teams, Feb. 28th at 4:30pm
by Emily Lawrence 13 Feb '19

13 Feb '19

The "D" word: solving for "diversity" on high-tech teams Janet Vertesi, Assistant Professor of Sociology at Princeton University February 28th at 4:30 PM Bowen Hall 222 This talk gives an overview of the sociological factors that affect the construction of diverse, high-performing teams. Building on a summary of key issues that affect gender and racial disparities in high-performing occupations, the talk covers the current social science and vocabulary for addressing the problem, as well as strategies for moving forward, avoiding common traps, and protecting performance-based advancement. Bio: Dubbed "Margaret Mead among the Starfleet" by the Times Literary Supplement, Janet Vertesi is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Princeton University and an expert in the sociology of science, technology, and organizations. Vertesi's past decade of research, funded by the National Science Foundation, examines how distributed robotic spacecraft teams work together effectively to produce scientific and technical results. Her book Seeing Like a Rover (University of Chicago Press, 2015) describes the collaborative work of the Mars Exploration Rover mission including the people, the images, and the robots who do science on Mars. Vertesi is also a long-time contributor to the Association of Computing Machinery conferences on human-computer interaction and computer-supported cooperative work. She is an advisory board member of the Data and Society institute in New York City and is a member of Princeton University's Center for Information Technology Policy. To join the talk, please email seasdiversity(a)princeton.edu <mailto:seasdiversity@princeton.edu> . This event co-sponsored by School of Engineering and Applied Science and Department of Computer Science.

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Reminder: Colloquium Speaker-Zvi Galil, tomorrow at 12:30pm
by Emily C. Lawrence 13 Feb '19

13 Feb '19

Distinguished Colloquium Speaker Zvi Galil from Georgia Tech, College of Computing Thursday, February 14 - 12:30pm Computer Science - Room 105 Host: Nick Feamster In May 2013, Georgia Tech together with its partners, Udacity and AT&T, announced a new online master’s degree in computer science delivered through the platform popularized by massively open online courses (MOOCs). This new online MS CS— or OMSCS for short — costs less than $7,000 total, compared with a price tag of $40,000 for an MS CS at comparable public universities and upwards of $70,000 at private universities. The first-of-its-kind program was launched in January 2014 and has sparked a worldwide conversation about higher education in the 21st century. President Barack Obama praised OMS CS by name twice, and more than 1,200 news stories mentioned the program. It has been described as a potential "game changer" and "ground zero of the revolution in higher education”. Harvard University researchers concluded that OMSCS is “the first rigorous evidence showing an online degree program can increase educational attainment” and predicted that OMSCS will single handedly raise the number of annual MS CS graduates in the United States by at least 7 percent. OMSCS started in 2014 with an enrollment of 380; in this semester (spring 2019) enrollment is close to 9,000; OMSCS is apparently the biggest MS in CS program in the world. So far more than 2,000 students have graduated from OMSCS; more than 1,000 will graduate each year from now on. The program has also paved the way for at least 22 similar, MOOC-based online MS programs. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the National Science Foundation, there is a shortage of 500,000 computer professionals in the US, a shortage that will reach one million by 2020. In other words, OMSCS is satisfying a great national need. The talk will describe the OMSCS program, how it came about, its first five years, and what Georgia Tech has learned from the OMSCS experience. We will also discuss its potential effect on higher education. Bio: Dr. Zvi Galil, Dean of the College of Computing, Georgia Institute of Technology, was born in Tel Aviv, Israel. He earned BS and MS degrees in Applied Mathematics from Tel Aviv University, both summa cum laude. He then obtained a PhD in Computer Science from Cornell University. After a post-doctorate in IBM's Thomas J. Watson research center, he returned to Israel and joined the faculty of Tel-Aviv University. He served as the chair of the Computer Science department in 1979-1982. In 1982 he joined the faculty of Columbia University. He served as the chair of the Computer Science Department in 1989-1994 and as dean of The Fu Foundation School of Engineering & Applied Science in 1995-2007. Galil was appointed Julian Clarence Levi Professor of Mathematical Methods and Computer Science in 1987, and Morris and Alma A. Schapiro Dean of Engineering in 1995. In 2007 Galil returned to Tel Aviv University and served as president. In 2009 he resigned as president and returned to the faculty as a professor of Computer Science. In July 2010 he became The John P. Imlay, Jr. Dean of Computing at Georgia Tech. Dr. Galil's research areas have been the design and analysis of algorithms, complexity, cryptography and experimental design. In 1983-1987 he served as chairman of ACM SIGACT, the Special Interest Group of Algorithms and Computation Theory. He has written over 200 scientific papers, edited 5 books, and has given about 250 lectures in 25 countries (over 60 in 15 countries on OMSCS). Galil has served as editor in chief of two journals and as the chief computer science adviser in the United States to the Oxford University Press. He is a fellow of the ACM and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a member of the National Academy of Engineering. In 2008 Columbia University established the Zvi Galil Award for Improvement in Engineering Student Life. In 2009 the Columbia Society of Graduates awarded him the Great Teacher Award. In 2012 the University of Waterloo awarded him an honorary doctorate in mathematics. Zvi Galil is married to Dr. Bella S. Galil, a marine biologist. They have one son, Yair , a corporate lawyer in New York City. Lunch for talk attendees will be available at 12:00pm. To request accommodations for a disability, please contact Emily Lawrence, emilyl(a)cs.princeton.edu, 609-258-4624 at least one week prior to the event.

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TODAY at 4:30pm in B205 E-Quad - Suriya Gunasekar, Toyota Technological Institute at Chicago
by Emily Lawrence 11 Feb '19

11 Feb '19

Speaker: Suriya Gunasekar, Toyota Technological Institute at Chicago Title: Rethinking the Role of Optimization in Learning Day: Monday, February 11, 2019 Time: 4:30 pm Room: B205 Engineering Quadrangle Host: Prof. Peter Ramadge Abstract: In this talk, I will overview our recent progress towards understanding how we learn large capacity machine learning models, especially deep neural networks. In the modern practice of deep learning, many successful models have far more trainable parameters compared to the number of training examples. Consequently, the optimization objective for training such models have multiple minimizers that perfectly fit the training data. More problematically, while some of these minimizers generalize well to new examples, most minimizers will simply overfit or memorize the training data and will perform poorly on new examples. In practice though, when such ill-posed objectives are minimized using local search algorithms like (stochastic) gradient descent ((S)GD), the "special" minimizers returned by these algorithms have remarkably good performance on new examples. In this talk, we will explore the role optimization algorithms like (S)GD in learning overparameterized models. Bio: Suriya Gunasekar is a research assistant professor at the Toyota Technological Institute at Chicago. Prior to joining TTIC, she finished her PhD at the University of Texas at Austin advised by Prof. Joydeep Ghosh. Her research interests are broadly driven by statistical, algorithmic, and societal aspects of machine learning, including topics of optimization, high dimensional learning, and algorithmic fairness.

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Zvi Galil Distinguished Lecture next Thursday (Valentine's Day) 12:30p
by Nick Feamster 07 Feb '19

07 Feb '19

Folks, Zvi Galil, Dean of Computing at Georgia Tech, the architect of the online MS in Computer Science at Georgia Tech, former Dean of Columbia, former president of Tel Aviv University, and member of the NAE, will be joining us next week for a distinguished lecture to tell us about Georgia Tech’s online Masters in Computer Science (OMSCS). Our department can learn a lot from Zvi and his OMSCS adventure, which I helped start (I developed one of the first courses in the degree). Aside from his distinguished career in research and administration, Zvi’s vision and leadership took Georgia Tech from relative obscurity to a top-tier department. Did I mention Zvi is a super great guy and that he has a fantastic sense of humor? You’ll really enjoy his talk, and I hope to see you there. Talk abstract here: https://www.cs.princeton.edu/events/25800 Please sign up to meet him here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1F_WgfioAIruNhJtrJHWEQSmR24hEFXm8EVz… Best, -Nick

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Colloquium Speaker-Tam Vu, TODAY at 4:30pm
by Emily C. Lawrence 07 Feb '19

07 Feb '19

Colloquium Speaker Tam Vu from the University of Colorado, Boulder Thursday, February 7 - 4:30-5:30pm Computer Science - Room 105 Host: Jennifer Rexford " Earable Computers : Ear-worn Systems for Healthcare, HCI, BCI, and Brain Stimulations" This talk introduces the concept of " Earable computers", small computing and actuating devices that are worn inside, behind, around, or on user's ears. Earable sensing and actuation are motivated from the fact that human ears are relatively close to the sources of many important physiological signals such as the brain, eyes, facial muscles, heart, core body temperature, and more. Therefore, placing the sensors and associated stimulators inside the ear canals or behind the ears could open up a wide range of applications from improving cognitive function, keeping truck drivers from falling asleep while driving, extending attention span, to quantifying pain and suffering, reducing opioid use, suppressing seizure, just to name a few. This talk will discuss the opportunities that earable systems could bring and system challenges that need to be addressed to unleash its potentials. I will share our experience and lessons learned through realizing such systems in the context of human computer interaction, brain computer interaction, and healthcare. Bio: Tam Vu is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science Department at University of Colorado, Boulder. He directs Mobile and Networked Systems (MNS) Lab at the university, where he and his team conduct system research in the areas of wearable and mobile systems including mobile healthcare, mobile security, cyber physical system, and wireless sensing. His research has been recognized with a NSF CAREER award, two Google Faculty Awards, ten best paper awards, best paper nomination, and research highlights in flagship venues in mobile system research including MobiCom , MobiSys , and SenSys . He is also actively pushing his research outcomes to practice through technology transfer activities with 17 patents filed and leading two start-ups that he co-founded to commercialize them.

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Reminder: Colloquium Speaker-Tam Vu, tomorrow at 4:30pm
by Emily C. Lawrence 06 Feb '19

06 Feb '19

Colloquium Speaker Tam Vu from the University of Colorado, Boulder Thursday, February 7 - 4:30-5:30pm Computer Science - Room 105 Host: Jennifer Rexford " Earable Computers : Ear-worn Systems for Healthcare, HCI, BCI, and Brain Stimulations" This talk introduces the concept of " Earable computers", small computing and actuating devices that are worn inside, behind, around, or on user's ears. Earable sensing and actuation are motivated from the fact that human ears are relatively close to the sources of many important physiological signals such as the brain, eyes, facial muscles, heart, core body temperature, and more. Therefore, placing the sensors and associated stimulators inside the ear canals or behind the ears could open up a wide range of applications from improving cognitive function, keeping truck drivers from falling asleep while driving, extending attention span, to quantifying pain and suffering, reducing opioid use, suppressing seizure, just to name a few. This talk will discuss the opportunities that earable systems could bring and system challenges that need to be addressed to unleash its potentials. I will share our experience and lessons learned through realizing such systems in the context of human computer interaction, brain computer interaction, and healthcare. Bio: Tam Vu is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science Department at University of Colorado, Boulder. He directs Mobile and Networked Systems (MNS) Lab at the university, where he and his team conduct system research in the areas of wearable and mobile systems including mobile healthcare, mobile security, cyber physical system, and wireless sensing. His research has been recognized with a NSF CAREER award, two Google Faculty Awards, ten best paper awards, best paper nomination, and research highlights in flagship venues in mobile system research including MobiCom , MobiSys , and SenSys . He is also actively pushing his research outcomes to practice through technology transfer activities with 17 patents filed and leading two start-ups that he co-founded to commercialize them.

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Robert Harrison will present his Pre FPO on February 7, 2019 at 2pm in CS 402
by Nicki Gotsis 04 Feb '19

04 Feb '19

Robert Harrison will present his Pre FPO on February 7, 2019 at 2pm in CS 402. The members of his committee are as follows: Jennifer Rexford (adviser), Nick Feamster, Nate Foster (Cornell), Kyle Jamieson, and David Walker All are welcome to attend. The talk title and abstract follow below. Title: Scalable Network-Wide Telemetry with Programmable Switches Abstract: Managing and securing modern networks requires collecting and analyzing network traffic from a distributed collection of switches in real time, i.e., performing network-wide telemetry. Telemetry systems must be flexible and fine-grained, both in timescale and traffic detail, to support the wide range of queries that analyze security, performance, and reliability properties of networks. Yet, they must also scale as the number of monitoring tasks, link speeds, and the size of the networks grow. Achieving fine-grained, network-wide telemetry that scales requires balancing the division of labor between high-speed network switches and general-purpose CPUs. Modern Protocol Independent Switch Architecture (PISA) switches combine the high-speed processing of network hardware with the programmability, albeit limited, of general-purpose CPUs and allow us to adjust this division of labor. This thesis explores, first, how to partition telemetry tasks between a general-purpose CPU and a single PISA switch for a flexible query language, and second, how to distribute a subset of queries expressed in that language across a set of switches. In order to realize these goals, we must address two key challenges: (i) how to effectively use a programmable switch to perform customized data collection that minimizes the amount of data processed by the CPU, and (ii) how to efficiently coordinate among a distributed set of switches to compute the output of a global function. In addressing both of these challenges, we must operate within memory, processing, and bandwidth constraints. We describe our solutions, respectively, to these challenges below. First, we present Sonata, an expressive and scalable network telemetry system that performs the collection and analysis of network traffic using the compute resources of both stream-processing servers and a programmable switch. Sonata provides a declarative interface to express queries using dataflow operators for a range of common telemetry tasks. Sonata partitions queries across a stream processor and a switch data plane, running as much of the query as it can on the network switch at line rate. Sonata models the constraints of PISA switches and solves an optimization problem to compile the high-level dataflow operators in the query language to low-level PISA primitives. Sonata can support a wide range of monitoring tasks while reducing the workload on the stream processor by orders of magnitude compared to existing telemetry systems. Second, we present Herd, a system for implementing a subset of Sonata queries distributed across a set of switches with high accuracy under resource constraints. Our solution counts relevant flows at distributed switches without maintaining per-flow state and probabilistically reports them to a central coordinator. Based on these reports, the coordinator adapts the reporting threshold and probability at each switch based on the spatial locality of the flows. Simulations using real traffic traces show that our prototype can detect network-wide heavy hitters accurately with 17% savings in communication overhead and 38% savings in switch state compared to existing approaches. We then present an algorithm to tune system parameters in order to maximize detection accuracy under resource constraints. Together, Sonata and Herd provide network operators the ability to execute a set of network-wide telemetry queries from a single interface that combines the strengths of both programmable data planes and general-purpose CPUs to achieve both flexibility and scalability.

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